Kim on Shmyhal's instructions regarding drinking water for Mykolaiv: «Good news, but we won't have time by the end of the year»

Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal and the head of Mykolaiv Regional Military Administration Vitalii Kim

Vitalii Kim, the head of Mykolaiv RMA, said that this year they will not have time to return drinking water to the taps of Mykolaiv residents, but «there are plans.»

He announced this on the air of the telethon «Edyni Novyny» on April 8, writes NikVesti.

«In Mykolaiv, the situation with water is the same: there is technical water. It is better than it was before, but you can't drink it. There is a project to implement water supply in the city of Mykolaiv — the Prime Minister issued an order. This is very good news, because it will be financed and it will be possible to restore, let's say. We won't have time until the end of the year, but in principle there are plans. Since last week, we have been intensively working on the project part that will be implemented,» said Vitalii Kim.  

Why is the water salty again in Mykolaiv?

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Mykolaiv was left without water for some time after the Dnieper aqueduct was damaged. Later, salt water from the estuary was introduced into the network, and today the city receives river water. In terms of its quality, it is inferior to the Dnipro river, but it is still better than the Lyman river. In this way, almost half a million residents of Mykolaiv receive better quality technical water in their homes.

But from the beginning of March 2024, the people of Mykolaiv noticed that the quality of the water in the taps deteriorated — it became saltier and took on a more yellow color than usual.

The municipal enterprise «Mykolaivvodokanal» commented on the deterioration of the quality of water in the citizens' taps only on March 15. They explained that the deterioration of water quality «is caused by natural and man-made factors», and also added that «there are no simple and quick solutions to such complex issues, but work in this direction continues».

It turned out that the state-owned enterprise «Kryvbasshahtzakryttia», which is located upstream of the place of water intake for Mykolaiv, dumped water from its sumps into the river. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine granted him permission to do this until March 15, 2024, as evidenced by the relevant order «On the discharge of excess return water into the Ingulets River». In fact, we are talking about water that, after use with the help of technical facilities, enterprises return to rivers in the form of sewage, mine, quarry or drainage water.

However, the main condition of this permission from the Cabinet of Ministers is that the enterprise must comply with individual regulations. That is, the content of chlorides (salts, — note) in Ingults should not exceed the maximum permissible concentration (MPC) of 350 milligrams per cubic decimeter (per liter, — note). For this purpose, mine waters must enter Ingulets together with fresh water, which would dilute them and reduce the percentage of mineralization. However, it turned out that this indicator was exceeded more than 4 times.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal reacted to the latest story of NikVesti about his scandalous decision to allow the discharge of mine waters to the state-owned enterprise «Kryvbasshahtozakryttia» into the river from which Mykolaiv receives its water. He held a meeting at which he «instructed to ensure the uninterrupted supply of technical water to Mykolaiv.»

What about the water in Mykolaiv?

Back in April 2022, Russian troops destroyed the water pipeline through which Mykolaiv received drinking water. Despite constant shelling, the workers of «Mykolaivvodokanal» tried to restore it, but without success.

The damaged water pipeline «Dnipro - Mykolaiv», which passes through the Kherson region, 2022

The damaged water pipeline «Dnipro - Mykolaiv», which passes through the Kherson region, 2022

Employees of «Mykolaivvodokanal» are restoring the water supply. Photo: «NykVesty"

In the same year, NikVesti found out how dangerous the water in Mykolaivka's taps is for consumption. It turned out that it contains enterococci, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, toxic elements, has an increased content of chlorides, sulfates, dry residue, etc.

More information about what threatens the people of Mykolaiv from the use of «technical» water and what awaits the residents of the city in the future — we presented in the material «Mykolaiv. The city that holds the defense of the south suffers from thirst».

In March 2023, the director of Mykolaivvodokanal, Borys Dudenko, announced the possible threat of destruction of the sewage system due to the influence of salt water. According to him, over the past year, the water utility has eliminated more than 1,000 leaks, and after the start of the supply of salty water, the number of accidents per day has increased to 10-15 times.

The European Investment Bank has approved additional credit financing of 20 million euros to improve water supply and drainage in Mykolaiv under the Municipal Infrastructure Development Program of Ukraine.

Before that, it was planned to allocate 1.2 billion hryvnias from the state budget for the restoration of the water supply system in Mykolaiv. Such a step is necessary for the city, because salt water corrodes the pipes and over time the entire water supply system will have to be changed in the city, explained the director of the water supply company, Borys Dudenko.

At the same time, the head of the Mykolaiv Regional Military Administration, Vitalii Kim, considers his team's decision to supply the city with «technical» water from the Southern Bug after the water main was damaged to be correct.

Currently, the Vodokanal is considering six options for arranging a new water intake site to provide Mykolaiv with drinking water. These searches began in the summer of 2022. At that time, the general director of the water utility, Borys Dudenko, talked about the options from where to get the necessary amount of water to fill the city's water supply system and its 24-hour operation.

• the first option is to go higher along the riverbed of the Southern Bug, choose a place with high-quality fresh water, build a water intake station there, lay a pipeline to Mykolaiv;
• the second is to continue pumping water from the Dnipro-Bug estuary, but to install industrial-scale reverse osmosis units. Such installations are very energy-consuming.

Already in August 2023, the department of capital construction and support of development projects of the Mykolaiv RMA announced a tender for the reconstruction of 12 sections of water mains damaged by salt water in different areas of the city for a total amount of 1 billion 348 million hryvnias.

In September 2023, the head of Mykolaiv RMA Vitalii Kim announced the possible deterioration of water quality in the taps of Mykolaiv residents. At the same time, he believes that currently the water from the taps of the people of Mykolaiv is better in terms of quality than «most of the water in Europe».

Currently, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is personally dealing with the issue of restoring the supply of drinking water to Mykolaiv.

In Berlin, on February 19, the Eastern Committee of the German Economy signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Mykolaiv Water Hub.